The reception Andy Murray gets on Centre Court grows louder by the match.

It could hit an impressive peak if he is still in the tournament on Sunday afternoon and, on the evidence of his three-sets win against Kevin Anderson on Monday, he has excellent prospects of doing so.

The defending champion won 6-4, 6-3, 7-6 (8-6) and still has not dropped a set in four matches. After taking his total tennis workload for the tournament to seven hours and 33 minutes, he secured his seventh straight quarter-final spot and his 17th Wimbledon win on the spin. This seriously is his fortress. Next up for the Scot is Grigor Dimitrov, a 6-4, 7-6 (8-6), 6-2 winner against Leonardo Mayer.

“It was good to get off in straight sets,” Murray said, “and I can rest up for the quarters. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the other matches.”

By the time this fourth-round match had drifted into the seventh evening of the 2014 championships, under the roof on the main court, the crescendo that greeted the champion’s three-set victory sounded like something Metallica might have constructed at Glastonbury. While Wimbledon squelched, Murray and Anderson were swinging in the rain, under their personal giant translucent umbrella, and they made the most of the blessing.

This was always going to be a fascinating collision of styles and resources. From the first point, onlookers sought signs of how the serve might dictate the course of the match. It was influential at several key moments – Murray out-aced 6ft 8in Anderson 11-9 – but there were subtleties woven through the text that made for an engaging narrative over two hours and 23 minutes.

Under forbidding skies and with a crisp breeze eddying around Centre Court, starting conditions in mid-afternoon did not smack of high summer, and both shanked in the first game, on Anderson’s rocket delivery, which he steadily cranked up to 124mph to hold.

If cricket-lover Anderson were, say, Stuart Broad, Murray came on from the other end doing his Glenn McGrath impression: deadly accurate, getting some swing and cut. It is not all about raw speed – as Anderson discovered when two break points down in the third game, sending his last forehand long.

Coming on from the royal box end, with Sir Alex Ferguson, a tennis addict in his retirement, again looking down on his compatriot with all the imperious gravitas he could muster (and what a coach he might have been for Murray), the Scot continued to mix pace with powered-down cunning. Anderson took him to deuce before Murray found a second ace, wide at 98 miles an hour, and stretched his lead to 3-1 after a quarter of an hour.

The pattern had been set: Murray teasing and prodding, Anderson soaking it up and looking for a home for his howitzers. But, by the time Murray hit his third ace, 126mph wide to the backhand to hold for love at 4-2, Anderson, who hit 68 aces in his first three matches, had yet to register a clean serving winner of his own.

It took him half an hour to find one but Murray, with two more unreturnables, was still outserving him as he fought through deuce again for 5-3.

Serving to stay in the set, Anderson produced a second ace, 128mph wide to the backhand, and held through deuce with a neat drop shot. But his closing effort for the set was a forced backhand into the net after 43 minutes and Murray was looking comfortable.

The skies began to spit at the start of the second, but not a lot else changed. Anderson, his left knee strapped as he still searched for rhythm, saved two break points with huge forehand drives down the line, and excellent second serves got him out of trouble twice more, but, clearly frustrated, he chose to come in behind a not-bad serve only to shove to volley wide. It was a pivotal game, handing Murray a lead he dare not waste.

Anderson had back problems during his third-round win over Fabio Fognini and his movement looked laboured. He was there for the taking.

Just past the hour, at 15-40 on Anderson’s serve, Murray complained that the court was getting slippery – although it did not prevent him breaking for 3-0 – at which point they scurried to the locker room and waited for the roof to be drawn across, as light rain scudded through Wimbledon. It soon turned heavy, though, wrecking the card on outside courts.

Wrapped up safe and dry, Murray and Anderson cared not for the travails of the outside world, although the break seemed to energise the South African, who clawed a game back, and Murray had to save a break point to hold for 4-2. He took the set with a superb, angled return that forced Anderson to volley wide and, after an hour and a half, all looked set for a smooth run to the line, but it did not quite pan out like that.

Murray did not play a perfect third set but there were so many glorious winners, on both wings, short and deep, with one outrageous leg-break of a drop shot bringing fans to their feet, that the mistakes were ultimately forgiven and forgotten.

Anderson, his long limbs drained at the end, would not give in and when he saved the 15th break point against him from 19, he had parity, but was behind in the serving cycle and again had to look to his renowned serve to stay in the tournament.

Murray bounced on the balls of his feet and twisted his hips, boxer-like, as he waited for the onslaught, but Anderson, as honest a performer as there is on the circuit, held for 5-5.

When Anderson had to serve for survival a second time against one of the best returners in the game, he produced some his best all-round tennis to force a tie-break – and that is not where Murray wanted to be against an opponent with a 10-8 record this year, against his own 6-6.

But Murray held his nerve, driving Anderson’s final serve deep to finish the job with a sublime cross-court backhand that his weary opponent, his long frame stretched to near its limit, could only tap into the turf.